View the 2017 All Iowa Reads Webinar Recording

This Webinar is designed to help library staff, trustees and community discussion leaders plan a discussion of the 2017 All Iowa Reads (AIR) selection Bottomland by Michelle Hoover. For the first time ever, we will be joined during the Webinar by the author of our AIR selection who will talk about the book and be available to take questions.

"At once intimate and sweeping, Bottomland follows the Hess family in the years after World War I as they attempt to rid themselves of the Anti-German sentiment that left a stain on their name. But when the youngest two daughters vanish in the middle of the night, the family must piece together what happened while struggling to maintain their life on the unforgiving Iowa plains.

In the weeks after Esther and Myrle's disappearance, their siblings desperately search for the sisters, combing the stark farmlands, their neighbors' houses, and the unfamiliar world of far-off Chicago. Have the girls run away to another farm? Have they gone to the city to seek a new life? Or were they abducted? Ostracized, misunderstood, and increasingly isolated in their tightly-knit small town in the wake of the war, the Hesses fear the worst. Told in the voices of the family patriarch and his children, this is a haunting literary mystery that spans decades before its resolution. Hoover deftly examines the intrepid ways a person can forge a life of their own despite the dangerous obstacles of prejudice and oppression.”

The AIR Webinar elements include:

Mini reviews of books that were AIR 2017 finalists

Review of the criteria used to select Bottomland

Resources available on the Iowa Center for the Book Website:

publicity materials

tips on how to make your discussion successful

availability of multiple copies to use for your discussion

adding your upcoming program to the Iowa Center for the Book AIR Calendar of Events

Michelle Hoover will provide an in-depth commentary about the story, introduce the characters, and identify topics and themes important to librarians planning their own discussions.